


Since Life is Sweet Here

by selfsong



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Double Dating, F/M, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfsong/pseuds/selfsong
Summary: Chowder and Farmer double date with Bitty and Jack; Chris Chow has a perfect day.
(or, Des-Zimbits wanted double date fic, I wanted to talk about aquariums.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garden of succulents (staranise)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/gifts).



Chris tumbled through the door to the Haus kitchen, not because he was in a particular hurry, just because it felt so nice to move fast after being in classes all day. Well, okay, and because Bitty’s Wednesday afternoon lecture ended an hour before Chris’s study group, so he usually got home just as something was starting to smell really good. Today it was cinnamon-y.

  
“Bitty! You look distracted. Whatcha thinking about? Is everything okay?”

  
“Hey honey, just baking and brainstorming. Jack’s not travelling this weekend and since we don’t have games I want to plan something date-y. Ever since we told all y’all we’ve ended up hanging out with the whole team a lot more instead of just us, since we don’t have to be as careful here- which is so great! Gosh, you’ve all been perfect!”

  
Chris smiled big at him to make sure Bitty knew he wasn’t upset - it was easy to hurt Bitty’s feelings if he thought he’d hurt your feelings. Chris wanted to say he understood, he felt that way about Caitlin a lot, balancing his time, even though she was so great about coming over to the haus and not minding when the guys were kind of embarrassing and also not minding when he’s doing just team stuff without her. But Chris’d been working really hard on interrupting less. It’s a bad habit, and it usually does the opposite of what he wants: instead of showing people that he’s listening it sounds like he’s too impatient to let them finish, or like he thinks that he knows what they’re gonna say before they say it, like maybe he doesn’t think they’re saying anything interesting or important. So. Smiling, not interrupting.

  
Bitty continued, “So I want to do something fun with him where nobody’s gonna get wrestled or called bro. Just for a change of pace.”

  
“I think that’s a really nice idea, Bitty! But you haven’t picked what kind of date yet?”

  
“I just don’t know! I want it to be somewhere real cute, though. Milkshakes and drive-ins kinda cute. But not so obviously date-y that Jack would have to worry about pictures. It’s tricky.” Bitty lifted his spoon, testing consistency, and set the bowl down.

  
Chris stretched over to swipe a finger through the icing, just on the side where some smears were stuck to the bowl, but paused guiltily and withdrew. Bitty raised an eyebrow at him, then plucked a spoon out of the dishrack and dunked it, handing it over with a wink.

  
“You know I can’t tell you no, I have no credibility left, but there’s a line. When you get TB from that godawful couch I’ll feel bad enough without your dirty fingers turning me into Typhoid Mary on the way. Clean spoons for sneaky snitches.”

  
Chris licked his spoon, a little at a time, while he thought about his best dates with Caitlin and watched Bitty frost cinnamon rolls.

  
“Hey Bitty? This is really good. And I was thinking, what about the aquarium? It’s really beautiful, and you can walk around and meet all of the fish and the cafe’s really pretty good, so you could have dinner there too. Except maybe it would be too public? Oh! If Caitlin and I came too then people wouldn’t think it was a date! Except that the whole point was for you guys to hang out without us, I’m sorry, I don’t want to ruin your date. Unless I get you guys guest passes so you don’t have to stay in the public part! I’m not sure if I can bring guests unless I’m actually there with them, though.”

  
“Chowder, love, the aquarium’s a great idea, we’d love to double date with you and Farmer, you wouldn’t be ruining anything at all. But, how can you get us behind-the-scenes passes at the aquarium? You mean the big one in Boston, right? I bet if Jack had someone from the Falcs call they could set it up, but then they’d definitely want pictures for social media and stuff,” said Bitty.

  
“Oh I’ve been there long enough now that it would be easy- I’d just have to let Karen know I’m bringing friends. We could go after hours, which I usually do anyway, and nobody would bother Jack!”

  
“Wait, Chris, do you… work at the aquarium? When? How?”

  
“I volunteer! Every week, almost, since I started Samwell. You didn’t know?”

  
I’m sorry, I really didn’t,” Bitty said.

  
“It’s okay, I just wish I’d taken you there sooner! It’s one of my favorite places in the world,” said Chris.

  
“I think Saturday is soon enough,” Bitty said and shot the bowl down the counter to him. “I’ll ask Jack, you check with Farmer and whoever you need to ask at the aquarium?”

  
Chris scraped another spoonful of icing up and popped it into his mouth so that he had both hands for texting.

“‘Thwathome.”

Bitty just laughed at him and said, “I don’t know why I even try, you may as well just stick your face directly into the bowl.”

* * *

Late Saturday afternoon Caitlin and Chris drove to Boston to meet up with Jack and Bitty, who’d been in Providence since Bitty’s last class on Friday.

 

“Thoughtfully-crafted hipster mix or Disney singalong?” asked Chris, flipping through the bulky cd binder that his car had in place of a sound system with bluetooth or auxiliary input capabilities.

  
“Well, it’s the aquarium, so -” said Caitlin.

  
“Little Mermaid!” they finished together.

  
Caitlin harmonized and drummed on the steering wheel while she drove, and Chris shoved the passenger seat all the way back and propped his feet on the dashboard so he could stretch out his hamstrings and bounce his feet along to “Under the Sea.”

  
The car smelled a little like dog and old In-N-Out, Caitlin didn’t quite have the range to sing Ariel, he was pretty achy from an overzealous reach in practice, and Chris couldn’t have been more pleased with his life. Gosh, Caitlin was great. He just liked her _so much_. And Caitlin and the aquarium and Jack and Bitty all at once! Not having to drive, singing in the car, Caitlin’s gleeful dramatic flare as Ursula and her pinky curled with his between them. An extra visit to his aquatic friends, getting to show them off to some of his favorite humans. What a perfect day, and they weren’t even there yet.

  
One full playthrough of the soundtrack and an encore of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” got them to the New England Aquarium, where they found Jack and Bitty brushing elbows and smiling quietly at each other halfway up the ramp curling around the Giant Ocean Tank.

  
They were in time to catch the last showing of the great white shark movie in IMAX, and when they came out of the theater the last aquarium visitors were seeping toward the doors like the foamy dregs of the tide going out, tugging cranky kids and trailing popsicle wrappers and ticket stubs and maps. Chris led his friends the opposite way, deeper into the aquarium and through a staff-only door. He poked his head into the volunteer coordinator’s office long enough to say hi to Linda and grab three guest passes, then started their personalized tour.

  
They saw the Myrtle the giant sea turtle, the seadragons, the jellies and the sharks. Chris brought a bucket of squid bits and showed Bitty and Jack how to feed the rays, and once the pail was empty they went in to visit Kali.

  
She was a curious octopus, quite small and living in a barrel behind the scenes because her eventual habitat was still occupied. Chris trailed his fingers through the cold water of her temporary home and several limbs came up to meet him.

  
“She’s friendly, but you’ll need to be patient with her. She’ll probably latch onto your fingers, but if she likes how you taste she might come all the way up to visit,” explained Chris as they all stuck their hands in the briny cold water, with a martyred look from Bitty.

  
She was currently a soft brown with a white spot on her head, flashing curiosity and excitement at them in colors and blotches. They marveled over her texture and let her explore the crevices between their fingers.

  
Eventually Caitlin said, “Okay, I need a break if I’m going to ever hold a volleyball again.”

  
She blotted the icy water off of her hands and put them on the back of Chris’s neck. She laughed at him when he squeaked and jumped, but stood close behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

  
“Sorry babe. Want me to be your ice pack? Where are you sore?”

  
“My thighs generally, and I tweaked my left gracilis, I think? You don’t have to-”

  
Caitlin’s strong, cold hands were already pressing gently at his inner thighs. Chris relaxed into her without taking his hands from Kali’s barrel, but glanced at Jack and Bitty, who weren’t a very handsy couple. Were they making Jack uncomfortable? Or making Bitty sad that he and Jack never got to pda? Oh crap, was this really insensitive, being gross and mushy in front of friends who had to be closeted?

  
Chris rushed to say, “It’s really fine, Farms, I promise I’ll stretch it out later, I don’t need anything right now.”

  
Jack didn’t look up from where his hand and Bitty’s were all tangled up with a few of Kali’s tentacles, but he had a chirping smile in the corner of his mouth when he said, “Chow, Farmer’s a responsible student athlete. She’s right, you shouldn’t ignore your injuries.”

  
“Yeah, Chris, let me feel you up. Listen to your captain.”

  
Jack made a face of exaggerated concern and said gravely, “Bittle. You’ve been walking a little stiffly, are you sure you’re okay? I’m worried about your glutes.”

  
He groped Bitty’s butt proprietarily with the hand not covered in octopus suckers.

  
Bitty startled, then nuzzled into Jack’s side. Sugary-sweet, he said, “How about your orbicularis muscle? We oughtta check that it’s still in good shape since you took that puck to the head.”

  
There was a confused moment of quiet.

  
“It’s your lips. I’m taking anatomy this semester!” Bitty explained.

  
Jack glanced at Chris and Caitlin and all three of them cracked up laughing.

  
Bitty scrunched his face at them. “I hate you all. I study sometimes. I know things.”

  
Jack kissed the pout off of his mouth, but soon they were both smiling too hard to do more than rub their noses together. Kali splashed and wrapped farther up Bitty’s wrist to get their attention back.

  
After a while Kali was done climbing over their hands and retreated to the bottom of her barrel. There was only one place left Chris meant to show them tonight, and they walked without speaking through the dark aquarium, listening to the burbles and hums and swishings of all the tanks and filters. Jack never took his hand out of Bitty’s back pocket.

  
They went last to visit the goosefish and her egg veil. Chris made sure the tank lights were on and the observation room was dim, then led the way to the best vantage point.  
They sat in the dark in front of her tank, Bitty mostly in Jack’s lap and Chris with his head on Caitlin’s stomach, and watched as the lights played off of the pearly sheet of eggs swaying and trembling in the water.

  
“It’s only one egg thick, but probably sixty feet long! There are over a million in one egg veil!” Chris whispered as they sat in the dark and gazed at Collette and her eggs.

  
It looked like nothing else he’d ever seen, but also like rain-whipped linen curtains on a balcony, when the doors are thrown open in a storm, or like Ophelia’s dress and hair in the current when she drowned.

  
“It actually is like a veil, a really long ridiculous one in royal wedding. Or like the suds of a really good bubble bath,” said Farmer.

  
“Or seafoam on the beach,” said Bitty.

  
“It’s like seeing the Milky Way on a moonless night, when you’re far enough from shore that there’s no light pollution,” said Chris.

  
It looked magical and fragile and infinite and mysterious. From a distance it was a delicate tornado, or a living, sentient cloud. The hair of an enchantress. Closer, it was dew on a window screen before the sun comes all the way up, or -

  
“Bubble wrap,” suggested Jack.

  
They were quiet again for a dreamy half hour. Bitty squeezed his hand as they left the room.

  
They turned in the guest passes and went to dinner, conversation picking back up again as the alien underwater mood dissipated.

  
Jack bumped his shoulder as they walked into the restaurant.

  
“Chow, thank you for sharing that with us. Really. You guys will have to come up to Providence soon, let us take you somewhere.”

  
Chris grinned at him and bumped back.

  
“It’s a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everything I know about the New England Aquarium is from their website and the book “The Soul of an Octopus,” from which I have also borrowed Kali. Egg veils are amazing; you should go google image search them. I have never actually seen one, but If anyone is looking to take me on the Ultimate Cutest Date… I'm [selfsong](http://selfsong.tumblr.com/) on tumblr too <3


End file.
